VIDEO: Lifeboat crew praised for dinghy rescue

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Published:11:00Wednesday 07 August 2013

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A DAD has thanked lifeboat crews who rescued his teenage son after he went missing at sea for four hours in an inflatable dinghy with a man he had just met.

The Coastguard mounted a major rescue after Sean Clifton, 14, and a 33-year-old man drifted out to sea from Easington Colliery with no safety equipment and just a pair of plastic oars. The operation involved several lifeboats and a Sea King helicopter.

Sean Clifton with his dad William Clifton

The pair were found just before dusk by the Hartlepool inshore lifeboat, one-and-a-half miles north-east of the dinghy’s launch point.